“I’ll get a drench,” said Donnie O’Reagan. Phantom was standing up now, his wet sides going in and out like bellows, his eyes waiting for the next spasm of pain.
Donnie O’Reagan came back with a bottle. He stood on a box and held Phantom’s tongue. “Hold him still whatever you do.” Half of it went down his arm. It smelled of turpentine or linseed, I couldn’t tell which.
“He’ll need an enema. Will you be calling the vet?” Cousin Mary left us silently.
“If he’s not better in twenty minutes I’ll give him another drench,” said Donnie O’Reagan, wiping his arms with a towel. “I’ll just be getting some soapy water. Keep him up. Walk him up and down. He mustn’t roll.”
“Okay,” said Angus.
I couldn’t speak. It was as though suddenly my throat was paralysed. I could hear Fiona sniffing. Angus hit Phantom as I led him outside. He tried to go down just outside the door on the concrete. “Hit him,” shouted Donnie O’Reagan, running towards his house. “He mustn’t go down. If he goes down we’re lost.”
I knew what he meant. Once a horse has twisted a gut, nothing can be done. He’ll die in agony. He may have twisted it already, I thought. Why did I leave him for lunch?
“I can’t get hold of the vet,” said Cousin Mary, coming back. “Is he any better?”
The sweat from Phantom’s neck was all over my arms. I was struggling with him all the time now. “I can’t hold him much longer!” I cried.
“Let me try,” Angus said. “I’ll hold him up on the other side.”
“Keep him walking, Donnie said you were to keep him walking,” shouted Fiona.
“Can’t you get another vet?” I cried. “Is there only one vet in the whole of Ireland?”
“He has to boil a kettle,” said Fiona. “He has no hot water in the cottage.”
“I was talking about vets!” I screamed. “Stand up, will you, Phantom?”
He was down again on some old cobbles. “Don’t let him roll,” screamed Angus.
“Hit him,” I yelled. “Stick some scissors in him. Anything.”
Angus hit him with a rope. I pulled. My hands were bleeding now. “Get up!” I yelled. “Phantom! Please get up … Up … Up … Phantom, up …”
He stood up slowly, shaking all over. His eyes were still glassy but some light was coming back to them; some sort of animal sanity at last. He looked at me as though he saw me for the first time and his ears went forward, and suddenly I wanted to cry.
Donnie O’Reagan was coming towards us with a bucket with a rubber syringe in it. “It’s over, the spasm’s over,” he said.
“Thanks be to God,” said Fiona, wiping her eyes.
It was as though he was coming back from a long journey. He nuzzled my pockets and then wiped his head on my shirt.
“We fed him too well, too soon. I’ll be getting him a hot mash with some salts in it. He won’t be needing the enema now.”
“Do you still want a vet?”
“Not now.”
“You’ve saved his life,” I said. “If you hadn’t found him he would have twisted a gut by now.”
Donnie O’Reagan shook his head. “It was God’s will,” he said. “It was a pity we ever left him though, we should have stayed.”
“I shan’t leave him again,” I answered. “Not day or night. I swear it now. Not till he’s really well and we’re home again.”
“But you can’t eat and sleep out here, and the stable is full of spiders,” cried Fiona.
“I’ll be with her,” said Angus. “We can’t risk Phantom’s life again.”
I was leading him up and down the yard now. He walked like an old horse with his head hanging down. Angus put his rug straight. “He looks awful: only fit for the knacker’s yard,” he said.
“Shut up. He’s going to recover. He’s going to jump at Wembley next year,” I answered. “Aren’t you, Phantom?”
“You are all filthy. If only you could see yourselves,” said Cousin Mary.
“I don’t want to, and I like being filthy,” I answered rudely. I could gladly bury myself in coal-dust if it would make Phantom well.
“You must look better when your parents arrive.”
“They don’t care how we look.”
I put Phantom back in his box and Donnie O’Reagan brought him a hot mash. Somewhere far away a clock chimed four times.
“I’ll wash, then I’ll take over while you clean yourself up,” said Angus, who had just begun to care how he looked, to demand smart shirts and leather jackets.
“I will be taking my wife to the hospital to see little Neil,” said Donnie O’Reagan. “I will not be long. Here is a second drench if he needs it.”
The bottle was covered with cobwebs. It looked as though it had lain on a shelf for years. I thanked Donnie O’Reagan and watched him leave. There goes a real friend, I thought.
“I will bring you something to eat. There are some sleeping bags in mother’s bedroom,” said Fiona. “And I’ll find you a lantern. I would stay with you tonight, but I can’t stand the spiders, truly I can’t.”
“How funny, I always look on them as friends. Mum calls them ‘brothers’,” I said.
“I always was scared of them.”
I was left alone with Phantom. He ate his mash slowly and his ears were still damp with sweat. I brushed his mane until Angus appeared and said, “Your turn to wash now. You smell of drench and sick horse.”
“You’re going to be well now,” I told Phantom. “We’re going to watch you day and night until we go home.”
I thought of home as I walked indoors and England seemed the most civilised country on earth. I hope Dad doesn’t get another posting for years and years, I thought, washing in the old-fashioned bathroom where the taps were made of brass and the windowpanes were green with a pattern on them.
Fiona gave me two sleeping bags. “They’re a bit moth-eaten,” she said. They were khaki with tapes down the side. They looked at least one hundred years old.
I told Cousin Mary that we were staying with Phantom. “He’s too sick to be left,” I said firmly. “He might have another attack of colic at any time.”
She shrugged her shoulders. Wisps of her hair had come unpinned as she sat brushing Connelly. “Wrap yourselves up well,” she said.
Fiona found us an old lantern with a wick, which she filled with paraffin. It smelled rather, but it gave out a lovely, warm, comforting light, quite different from that of a torch.
“I’ll just be fetching you some more matches,” she said.
“We won’t need them for hours,” I said.
“Darkness comes soon. The nights are drawing in, to be sure. And I have to be going to church tonight. There’s a special service. It’s a saint’s day, you understand.”
Angus and I made ourselves hay beds in the passage outside the loose boxes. The big grey horse and Peppermint were leaning over their doors and blowing warm air from their nostrils. Phantom stood at the back of his box resting a hind leg. Horses can sleep standing up, and his eyes were shut so I think he was sleeping. Fiona appeared with mugs of tea and a plate of sandwiches on a tray.
“I’ll bring you supper when I return from church. Something hot.”
“You’re an angel,” replied Angus.
“Can’t one of us get it for ourselves?” I asked.
“No, I’ll bring it.” She was dressed ready for church.
“I feel a heathen,” Angus muttered. “When did we last go to church?”
“Years ago.”
“Exactly.”
“I’ll go and get some books,” said Angus presently. “Something light and easy to read.”
“Something about horses.”
A mist was coming down outside. It was a drowsy sort of evening. If I had shut my eyes I would have fallen asleep.
“There’s only this old book about horses,” said Angus returning. “I’m sorry.”
It was the one I had looked at once before. It was full of men in top hats deli
vering foals; and for nearly every illness horses were bled, preferably with leeches. Angus had found a book by Hammond Innes. Whenever I spoke he said, “Shut up, this is exciting,” or “Shh.” In the end I fetched a body brush and groomed Phantom. Presently Fiona appeared with scrambled eggs on toast on tin plates. “Here’s a flask, too, with hot coffee in it, and two mugs.”
The mugs and the tin plates looked as though they had been through several wars along with the sleeping bags. But the Thermos flask was Cousin Mary’s and quite new. “I’ve brought a bag of apples, too.”
Fiona waited while we ate. “The telephone is working again. It was cut off because we didn’t pay the bill.”
“We must owe you lots of money,” said Angus, handing her his empty plate. “I hope we are paying guests.”
“I don’t know, to be sure, but you’re very welcome.”
“Can’t we wash up our plates?”
“Whatever will you be saying next?” asked Fiona. “Where would you be washing them now? In the horses’ buckets?”
Angus lit the lantern. “We mustn’t kick this over, or the whole stable will go up like a tinderbox,” he said.
I went to look at Phantom. He was eating hay and looked better. His ears were warm at last, and his sides were beginning to fill out.
Angus returned to his reading. The sky grew dark outside. We went indoors in turn to clean our teeth and put on warm clothes. Cousin Mary had already gone to bed with a headache, and the dogs, which slept in her room, had gone too. Fiona was waiting to lock up the house. “Mother insists on it,” she said. “Though I hate locking you out.”
“It doesn’t matter. We’ll yell if we want anything,” I answered. “Don’t worry.”
“I hope Phantom’s all right.”
“Of course he is,” I said, touching wood.
Angus read by lantern light. Birds fluttered in trees. Once I heard apples fall from the trees in Donnie O’Reagan’s garden. At eleven o’clock Phantom lay down. It was completely dark now, but neither of us was frightened or even nervous. I think we both felt at home with the smell of horse all about us. Angus bolted the stable door on the inside, though usually it was never shut in the summer. I took a last look at Phantom by lantern light. He looked sweet lying there in his rug, and I sat with him, my arms round his neck, until Angus called, “Come on, for goodness sake, there won’t be any paraffin left in the lantern if we keep it alight much longer.”
“I wish we could always sleep in here,” I said, getting into my sleeping bag. “It’s much more peaceful than the house.”
“Until the mice start to squeak,” replied Angus. “And the spiders start to crawl.”
“Phantom really is better. I hope he stays well now for ever and ever.”
“So do I. He’s caused enough trouble.”
“You’re a fine one to talk.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean you started it all by going into the attic when you were told not to. If you had done what you were told you would never have been kidnapped.”
“That’s what you think.”
“And it hasn’t done any good, the stuff’s still there,” I added. “So it was all in vain.”
“Are you trying to pick a quarrel?” asked Angus.
“No. But stop being beastly about Phantom.”
Some time later Angus woke me. “Listen,” he said.
“You’re imagining things,” I answered. “It’s just a plane flying overhead.”
“That’s what you think,” replied Angus, getting out of his sleeping bag and feeling for his shoes in the dark. “But I think it is something else. I think we are going to have visitors.”
My inside had started to flutter in a funny way. I sat up in the dark. The noise was still there. It was the sound of an engine running and then the sound of feet in boots on gravel, which made my hair stand on end.
Then I was out of my sleeping bag too, finding my one Wellington boot, which had a sock inside that I didn’t bother to put on. We didn’t speak, because suddenly there seemed no need for words. But I knew somehow that Angus had taken a shotgun out of the pile of hay and was dusting it. Then I heard him load it, ready to fire. I remembered that Dad had taught him to shoot. I stood up and fetched a fork from the end of the stable and waited, wishing that there was more light, or that we could light the lantern.
The engine had stopped running, but there was still the sound of hurrying feet and I felt as though I had been waiting my whole life for this moment.
12
The voices outside were soft and Irish.
“We shouldn’t be leaving the horse,” said one.
“I wouldn’t be beat by a slip of a girl,” said another.
“We have to keep to our word,” argued a third.
“Let him be. That’s all I’m saying. Let her keep him.” I could feel the tenseness in Angus as he stood waiting with the gun.
“Don’t shoot anyone,” I whispered. “Just frighten them a bit.”
“Shut up,” he hissed.
The horses were listening too. It was as though we were all waiting to see what fate had ready for us. I held on to the fork. Far away an owl hooted.
“We will be taking him further away this time. There’s a gentleman that’s coming from the United States. He’s looking for a dressage horse, you know. We can ask a lot if he’s in good shape … Four thousand or more, and that will be buying a lot of guns.”
We heard the boots come nearer. A hand rattled the doors. “It’s been bolted on the inside, now how’s that?”
“I wouldn’t be knowing.”
“Would they be expecting us then?”
“It could be locked. O’Reagan could have the key up at his cottage.”
“We had best be moving the ammunition soon, if it’s to be shipped out tomorrow night.”
“We had best be seeing the little horse first. I have the van for him parked down the road.”
“Get a pole then and we’ll ram the door.”
I was just behind Angus now. My throat had gone dry. “Keep back,” he whispered. “The gun will kick a bit – I won’t hurt anyone. Get back.”
There was a gap between the door and the doorpost. He was going to fire through it. I prayed that he wouldn’t hurt anyone, that somehow we would all come through unscathed, but at that moment it didn’t seem possible. We seemed to have reached the end of a long struggle which had started when we first put a foot in the attic.
“Put a head collar on Phantom. If they break down the door, gallop through it. Hurry!” whispered Angus.
“What about you?”
“I’ll be all right.”
I opened Phantom’s door and slipped a head collar on him. I knotted the rope on the other side so that I had reins and, using an old box as a mounting-block, I managed to clamber on his back.
They started to batter the door. Angus fired. Outside someone shouted. Then shots started to come into the stable and Angus ducked sideways, shouting, “Are you ready?”
“Jump up behind,” I shouted.
“I can’t,” he shouted. “You go.”
Men were coming in now, shouting, “It would never be Donnie O’Reagan shooting like that.”
I rode Phantom straight at them, out through the door, and saw that the lights were on in the house and in Donnie O’Reagan’s cottage too.
I banged my knee on the doorpost as Phantom jumped what was left of the door lying outside in the yard. There seemed to be people everywhere. I thought I heard Fiona calling and Donnie O’Reagan shouting to one of his children to come back. I wasn’t afraid of being shot but I was afraid for Angus still in the stable.
Then the shooting started up again.
I rode Phantom at the wall which separated the yard from the paddock. I felt his hind legs go under him and his ears went forward and then we were over, galloping to the far side of the house where we would be safe.
Fiona flung open a window and yelled, “Is Angus all right?”
“No. He’s trapped in the stable. He needs help,” I yelled back, and as I spoke my blood started to run cold, so that suddenly I was shivering and my teeth started to chatter. I wished I was with Angus in the stable, standing beside him shoulder to shoulder, for what was the use of saving Phantom and losing Angus? I thought of all the times we had quarrelled and all the good times we had shared together. I thought that if I went back to the yard, the men might start shooting at me and Phantom, and give Angus a chance to escape. I turned Phantom and rode him at the wall but this time he refused, which wasn’t surprising since it was quite high. I shouted at him and tried again.
The shooting had started up once more and I saw Donnie O’Reagan standing outside his cottage yelling, “Leave the kid alone. He’s only a youngster!”
I wondered why Cousin Mary hadn’t come out to help; then I remembered the sleeping-pill she had taken and imagined her sleeping peacefully while we struggled almost alone outside. The stable seemed full of men now and someone had turned on the lights of the Land Rovers. I kicked Phantom as hard as I could and rode again at the wall. This time he went over, and I stood in the yard shouting, “Leave my brother alone. You can have my horse, but leave him alone.”
Then I saw Angus was still free, crawling along the stable roof. I rode nearer and called, “Jump, for goodness sake, jump! Phantom will carry us both.” But by now there were two Land Rovers in the yard blocking both the wall and the entrance, and I realised that I was trapped, that there was no way out at all.
I looked at the Irish faces all around me and they looked nice enough. It seemed silly that we had to be enemies when we spoke almost the same language and looked just the same. My teeth had stopped chattering and my head felt completely clear. I saw everything as though I was seeing it for the first and the last time. I imagined my own funeral. My parents laying a wreath on my coffin and the Prime Minister of England seeing the Prime Minister of Eire. I saw the newspapers with their screaming headlines: ENGLISH CHILDREN SHOT IN COLD BLOOD and COLD-BLOODED MURDER OF HOLIDAY CHILDREN.
Phantom Horse 3: Phantom Horse Disappears Page 9